How to connect Google Home with your Chromecast account?

Wait, the Google Home can work with my Chromecast? You bet it can. And this is how you do it.

First, keep in mind you need to know your Chromecast’s specific name.

Why’s that? For a simple reason – when Google Home communicates with other devices in your home, it needs to know which specific device you are trying to talk to. When you’re just playing content directly off the Home (such as music), this isn’t an issue, as you can just say “Play X on Spotify”. Casting works just a bit differently, and requires you to specify the object your want to stream to when you decide to cast. As long as both devices are on the same Wi-Fi network though, you should be good to go.

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To cast to your Chromecast, simply tell your Google Home “Ok Google, Cast CONTENT_NAME to CHROMECAST_NAME”. In my case, my Chromecast is called “Living Room Ultra”. So if I wanted to cast content to my TV, I would just say “Ok Google, cast Android Authority videos to Living Room Ultra”. It really is that simple.

Be specific, it pays off on the long run

Well, it’s almost that simple. A few things to note, first, Google Home will automatically stream video content from a default service, such as YouTube. That means if you want to cast to a non-default service you have to get more specific with your commands. So if I wanted to watch a video on Netflix, I’d have to say “Ok Google, Stream House of Cards on Netflix to Living Room Ultra”.

This might seem like quite a long stream of words to say, but the good news is that Google Home will remember the last video service you streamed to that specific Chromecast with, and so if I wanted to switch to something else, say, Orange is the New Black, I would just say “Ok Google, watch Orange is the New Black on Netflix” and the content on my TV would change accordingly.

The device you are casting to will remain the default until you tell it otherwise, though. So if you are watching something on YouTube and ask Google Home to play something on Spotify, it will switch the TV input to a Spotify stream. You have to be discrete the first time you play a particular type of content on a device, so if you want to watch content on your TV and listen to music on your Home device, you’ll have to say something along the lines of “Play Rodeo Ruby Love on Kitchen Home”, where Kitchen Home is the name of my Google Home.

How to stop casting?

To stop casting to an exterior device, you’ll have to say “Ok Google, stop casting”. After this, the link between the Home and the device you are casting to will break, and your Home will return to the default audio source and the Google Home Chromecast session will end. If you ask for video content again, the Google Home will ask you to specify a device name to cast to. Pretty nifty, eh?

And that’s about it. Google Home’s Chromecast support is one of our favorite features, but Google’s smart speaker has quite a few capabilities, so make sure to stay tuned to our hub page to get all the news about the new things your virtual assistant can do!